Milli was preparing to bake and decorate a birthday cake for Camille’s daughter Gracie. The young diver’s birthday brought an unwanted bitter memory from only three months ago. Milli’s birthday had fallen the day after her sister’s death. The day after she discovered the truth about her sister’s love for her and the truth about her marriage. Only Jackson’s dad, Bill, had remembered her birthday during the chaos of that week. Milli didn’t know if she could ever celebrate her birthday again. Her weary heart pushed away the tainted memories of all the birthdays, memories she and Marni would never share again, and she tried to focus on the positives like her therapist wanted instead of the bitterness of her betrayal craved. Dry ingredients were measured and sifted together while wet ones sloshed in her three mixers. A large double oven warmed the whole house as it filled the rooms with pleasant smells. Milli thought again about how she would need to consider investing in an air

Milli wondered if Lloyd had talked to anyone about all the drama Tonia had caused in his life. She had seen men fall into Marni’s orbit and stay there for years; some ended up losing their marriages. “I promised to come back for her… I got home from Bootcamp a day early to surprise her and my family. I thought I was home alone, then I heard them upstairs. I just stood there at the door, watching my cousin screwing my girlfriend. I must have made a sound because they stopped. Both said they were sorry, and I punched Tim square in the nose. I hit him and didn’t stop. Tonia was screaming at me to leave him alone. When she said that she was having his baby, I froze.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “Tim got up and hugged Tonia, said he was going to marry her. He begged me to forgive him and said it had just happened. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It felt like the time we were screwing around, and I fell off the barn, but this time it wasn’t my ribs that were broken,

Milli was up before dawn. Peeking in Lloyd’s room, she saw sprawled out on the bed in his boxers. Empty bottles from the mini-bar covered the night table. On one shoulder was a military tattoo, and in the center of his chest was a heart with a lettered ribbon. ‘ANTONIA’ was written there. It looked like an old tattoo, one that had spent years over his heart. She scowled as he rolled over onto his side, exposing his back. He was covered in scars and a few had come from bullets. She had grown up in the Vegas ghetto until she was 6, then had a close friend who was a cop and another who was a cop’s son, so she knew what those wounds looked like when they healed. She was glad Lloyd was out of the military and working in a county as small as Pagosa. His life was safe now, but his spirit was another story. Tonia had crippled it. Sitting by the bed, a plan quickly formed in her mind, Milli logged into the hotel’s wi-fi. She found the shop she was looking for in minutes and snapped a

The wind raged through the trees above him. Lloyd was about to call out when he heard the whistle from the overgrowth under a large cedar, it was a place sheltered from the oncoming storm. Lloyd pushed away the overgrowth of limbs and fallen branches, there he saw Beau was leaning against the trunk, the whistle in his mouth. He seemed asleep; he inhaled slowly and blew a loud blast. Ben was lying next to him, his shoulder ripped open, his skin ashen. Lloyd knew Ben was dead. Ben’s coat was draped over Beau’s legs. Lloyd crawled in, “Beau, I’m here.” Lloyd lifted the bloody coat off his friend’s leg. It was a mangled mess. A belt was tightened above his knee. Lloyd had seen a wound like this before. The driver in an APV ahead of him had suffered the same injury when they ran over an IED, he hadn’t made it. Lloyd knew that the tourniquet would cost Beau his leg, but it may have saved his life. “Hang on, Beau. I am going to get you out of here.” Lloyd cr

Superintendent Patrick had asked Milli for her number again at Ben Wallace’s funeral. Milli had been frozen in place for a moment with Emily on her hip, looking for Aunt Elizabeth. She had handed over one of the Wild Anemones business cards without hesitation and agreed to make 1000 simple vanilla cupcakes and a specialty cake for a raffle.It had taken her two days of baking in her oversized double oven, in the oven of the single bedroom cottages and the oven in the Anemone. Running between the four buildings in the wind and snow was annoying and cold. Now, she had only to decorate the last of them and deliver them today.While her mixers hummed, making more buttercream frosting, Milli rolled out fondant and stamp-cut hearts out of the sheets. Each heart made her think of Lloyd’s tattoo. She groaned in her head; she liked him a lot, but obviously, the feeling wasn’t mutual. He made her feel things she didn’t understand, things different from wh